SpaceX

Enlarge / The Rocket Report is published weekly. (credit: Arianespace/Aurich Lawson) Welcome to Edition 1.22 of the Rocket Report! We have plenty to discuss this week, from Paul Allen’s untimely passing to the Atlas V rocket’s success as well as why SpaceX remains in Los Angeles despite California’s high taxes and regulations. We also have […]

Trevor Mahlmann/Special to Ars 10:35pm ET Update: On Sunday night, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off as scheduled, and ascended into space. After about three minutes, the second stage carried its payload onward, toward a successful deployment of the SAOCOM 1A satellite into a Sun synchronous orbit. After it separated from the second stage, the […]

Last month when Boeing and SpaceX announced the first astronauts who will fly on their commercial crew spacecraft, several newspapers across the U.S. began publishing an op-ed that criticized the process by which Boeing competitor SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rocket. “The first op-ed appeared in a Memphis newspaper a week before the commercial crew […]

Enlarge / SpaceX launched a similar satellite, Telstar 19 Vantage, in July of this year. (credit: SpaceX) 12:55am ET Monday Update: A little more than an hour after its launch window opened—the delay was due to remnant thunderstorms in the area—SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida early on Monday morning. The rocket’s first stage […]

SpaceX successfully launched one of its used Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral tonight at 1:18AM ET, deploying the Merah Putih communications satellite just over half an hour later. This marks the first time that SpaceX reused one of its new powerful Block 5 boosters — the final upgrade of the Falcon 9 that is […]

Enlarge / The Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket, on the launchpad, with its Telstar 19V payload. (credit: SpaceX) Having worked through its fleet of used Block 4 rockets, SpaceX will now transition into flying its more advanced Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket full time. As early as 1:50am ET […]

Enlarge / An artist’s view of the Starliner spacecraft en route to the International Space Station. (credit: Boeing) One of the biggest rivalries in the modern aerospace industry is between Boeing and SpaceX. Despite their radically different cultures, the aerospace giant and the smaller upstart compete for many different kinds of contracts, and perhaps nowhere […]

NASA said it will pay $400 million more for cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2020, thanks in part to a 50 percent price increase from supplier SpaceX. On top of that, the ISS will receive six fewer tons of cargo, so…